Sunday, January 06, 2013

20 C + M + B 13

This is one of those lovely years where the date of Epiphany, January 6, twelve days after Christmas, lines up with Sunday, ensuring that the feast receives its full due.

From Darwin's Epiphany 2009 post:

For those of us who are gentile Christians, the feast of the Epiphany holds a special meaning, as it recalls that Christ was done homage as a king by Magi from the East at the time of his birth. Though Matthew's gospel provides few details, the Magi are traditionally recalled as three, with the names Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar. I first encountered this classic orchestration of We Three Kings by Eugene Ormandy when I was a child, watching my dad give the annual Christmas Star Show up at the Griffith Observatory. Since the recording is hard to find, and there too it the music provided background to a montage of artistic representations of the Three Kings, I took the liberty of putting together a YouTube video for the occasion.

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Reading

With the Catholic News sites discussing the Vatican's move to reform the LCWR, I pulled this slim volume written back in 1986 off the shelf to re-read. It's a quick and amusing read: a satirical view of the breakdown and renewal of reli...

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This was the first time in some years that I've re-read this Austen novel, one of the quieter and shorter ones, but one which has ranked among my favorites. It was striking me, on this pass, that it rather shows the effects of having be...